In the wake of Hamas’ unprovoked attack on Israel and the subsequent mass atrocities committed against Israel’s civilians, including many women and children, there has been an outpouring of support for the Jewish State from many countries, organizations, and the Jewish community in the Diaspora.
Amidst all this, anti-Israel groups worldwide have come together to celebrate the grotesque terrorism of Hamas. In Australia, people chanted “Gas the Jews” and “F**k The Jews” on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Other protests worldwide included participants praising Hamas under the pretense that “resistance” legitimizes the violence committed.
However, this is also sadly happening in the Jewish community.
Just a subway ride from my home in Brooklyn, the Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) at CUNY Law has long touted anti-Zionism as one of the organization’s core values.
This summer, the JLSA released a statement defending CUNY Law graduate Fatima Mohammed’s disgusting graduation speech that the CUNY Board of Trustees condemned; the group has also campaigned against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s non-binding working definition of antisemitism, and supported the adoption of a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolution on CUNY Law’s campus.
On October 7, as Hamas was committing war crimes and mass atrocities, they declared solidarity with “the Palestinian people in their righteous and determined struggle against murderous settler colonialism and apartheid! Palestine will be free!”
On October 10, the JLSA posted a statement further elaborating on their deranged position, frequently incorporating Jewish themes into their disgusting screed and egregiously implying that Hamas’ genocidal rampage is a response to “colonialism.”
Every self-serving claim they make flies in the face of reality, and seemingly endorses Hamas and disgraces the murdered. They vilify Zionism as “a political ideology predicated on theft and destruction” which “serves to imperil both Jews and Palestinians even though its proponents only target the latter.” In reality, Zionism is simply the Jewish people’s hope and realization of the 2,000 year dream to return to Israel, rather than relying on a world that has continuously failed them.
JLSA validates “Palestinian resistance,” specifically citing the 2018-2019 Gaza border protests, which included Hamas-endorsed terrorism. Actual attempts at peace, like the Oslo Accords, are smeared as “farcical propaganda campaigns.” They even condemned CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, who has been historically apathetic towards Jewish issues, for his impotent statement on the Hamas atrocities, which did not even include the word terrorism. They claimed that Matos Rodriguez’s statement shows “the CUNY administration does not speak for its student population, which is largely composed of working-class New Yorkers and people of color,” offensively asserting that New Yorkers are unable to recognize savagery and barbarity as what it is.
Their statement ends with this quote:
as Jewish students of a school that claims the motto ‘law in the service of human needs,’ we will continue to pursue tikkun olam –– the repairing of the world. This necessarily includes our unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their decades-long resistance against Zionist brutality and our classmates who are courageously advancing that struggle.
According to their logic, Hamas and other terrorists are agents of Jewish values. Should we thank bloodthirsty psychopaths for killing Jews? Should we take Hamas’ genocidal charter as a new component of rabbinical knowledge? Should we celebrate Hamas’ invasion of Israel as a new holiday?
Of course not.
This diseased JLSA uses Judaism as a shield to hide their antisemitism. Any Jew who supports the murder of other Jews while elevating their murderers has lost the right to speak “as a Jew.”
How self-hating and deluded must one be to come to the conclusions they have reached? They do not speak for the nearly universal majority of Jews who identify as Zionists. Instead, the CUNY JLSA speaks for terrorists and their sympathizers, who would likely brutally murder every single member of the organization if given the chance.
This is a stain on the already hopelessly marred record of antisemitism in the CUNY system. Will the group and their associates suffer any consequences? Probably not. That’s why we need to spread the word and clarify that this insanity cannot be tolerated in the already intolerable environment that enabled JLSA’s antisemitism. This war is apolitical. The issue at hand is a fight between good and evil.
It seems clear what side CUNY JLSA has chosen.
This article was originally published in the Algemeiner.